FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb

Remembrance lies at the heart of Judaism and Christianity. Every spring Jews and Christians remember the great events that shaped their faiths and cultures: the Passover and the Crucifixion. But in the millennia that have passed since those events there have been other great moments in the development of those faiths that have fallen out of historical memories. IN this FRDH, First Rough Draft of H...

If you've been having a hard time understanding Brexit maybe it's because you don't get that it is a ghost story. Brexit is about how the ghost of Margaret Thatcher has come to haunt Britain's Conservative Party. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks back at the nearly 30 year story of how the Tory Party has tried to appease her ghost and atone for the sin of forcing her to resign by carryi...

FRDH stands for First Rough Draft of History and the very first drafts of history were written in cuneiform in the Akkadian language at the time of the Assyrian Empire, around 1,000 BCE. In this podcast, Michael Goldfarb talks to Assyriologist Dr. Moudhy al-Rashid, about the world described in the cuneiform covered fragments she works with. Her specialization is in medical texts. You think depress...

Since at least 1994 America has been in the grip of an incivil war. That year, led by Newt Gingrich, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives for the frst time in 40 years. Incivil war may sound like a figure of speech, something in the realm of the metaphorical - but it is not. The weapons may be words but the they are deployed in support of a radical reordering of America...

Venezuela is back in the news along with its relationship to the US. Venezuelans have taken to the street to demand a change of government from the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro but do they want US intervention? In this FRDH podcast, drawn from Michael Goldfarb's archive he looks back at a reporting trip to Caracas made in 2007 shortly after protests against Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez had...

On the day of the Brexit Vote: a report from the scene outside Parliament as Brexiteers and Remainers demonstrate as MPs prepare to vote on the Withdrawal Agreement from the EU. FRDH stands for First Rough Draft of History and host Michael Goldfarb took his sound recorder down to the demonstration to write this very immediate draft of the historic Brexit Vote.

Treason has many meanings. Treason is a fighting word and a legal term and it is very likely to be one of the words of 2019. Right wing demagogues throw charges of treason around easily, liberals tend to prefer not to use it except in its narrowest legal sense. In this First Rough Draft of History podcast, Michael Goldfarb looks at some different definitions of the word and wonders if they apply t...

On the 70th anniversary of Britain’s NHS, this FRDH podcast looks at a personal level at how the NHS born out of crisis compares to the American health care system. Host Michael Goldfarb has experienced both systems intimately and explains the origins of the NHS and the challenges it faces today.

The world of work is changing and it's become a matter of life and death. Life expectancy in America is declining especially among those whose work and prospects have disappeared. Michael Goldfarb speaks with Princeton University economics professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton about their research into the causes of declining life expectancy and the prospects for the future as technology makes man...

The American midterm elections are over but the Democrats' Dilemma remains. How to harness its progressive grassroots energy and the real hatred of Donald Trump into a deeper political program that can be built on for 2020 and beyond. This podcast is based on reporting FRDH presenter Michael Goldfarb did for a BBC radio 4 documentary. He traveled for three weeks in October to Georgia, Texas and th...

Aleksandar Hemon is one of America's foremost writers but he was born in Bosnia and saw his country disintegrate. Actually Hemon watched the disintegration from America. He was in the US when the war started that destroyed his hometown Sarajevo. Stranded in Chicago and didn't speak much English. Yet within a few years he had graduated from Northwestern and was working on his first book. What happe...

In this BBC documentary, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfarb, goes on a Journey to Ashkenaz. He visits what is today Ukraine which was once the heartland of Ashkenazic Jewry. It is where his father's family comes from. Excellent sound and music in this piece.

The Democrats in the upcoming Midterm elections face a dilemma. Beyond not being the party of Trump who are they? What does the party stand for? How do Democratic leaders square the circle between its urban base and the rural voters it still needs to win power. In a far ranging conversation with Washington Post columnist and political science professor Brian Klaas, FRDH podcast host Michael Goldfa...

What happens when a group of people are cut off from their history? More specifically their family history. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb reflects on how children become aware of history and how the Holocaust has cut most of the world's Jews off from their family stories and so cut them off from the main channel of history.

On the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a look back at Czech Cinema. In a decade of tumultuous change in the arts and cultural expression this tiny country's filmmakers were as important to the youth revolution as artists in the West. In this podcast, originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb tells the story of how a unique set of circumstances made...

On the twentieth anniversary of the Omagh bombing an FRDH meditation on Ireland, borders and how Brexit promises to undo the achievement of the Good Friday Agreement. For five years in the 1990s FRDH host Michael Goldfarb covered the political process that led to the Good Friday Agreement. He recalls the politicians struggle to make the partition border on the island of Ireland meaningless, he als...

A conversation with investigative journalist David Cay Johnston on death, taxes and Donald Trump. "Nothing is certain but death and taxes" wrote Benjamin Franklin. Another certainty is that Donald Trump is afraid to let the people he governs see his taxes. Johnston explains the history of taxes and how from the beginning of civilization it has been used to organize economics and politics. Then we...

America is undergoing a crisis of civility - don't just take FRDH podcast's word for it - and this civility crisis is an example of the Paradox of Tolerance. In this FRDH, Michael Goldfarb traces the origins of the civility crisis thirty years to Newt Gingrich's declaration of a second Civil War using words instead of guns to conquer all those who disagree with the Republican party. He looks at ho...

What is Reality in the Age of Trump? In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb speaks with Luke Harding, former Moscow correspondent of the Guardian newspaper, and author of Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, about the long, long history of official lying in Russia, how people in that country sort out reality from the propaganda, and how Putin's expertise...

This edition of Bible Study for Atheists looks at today's Jewish quarrels and asks whether the arguments among Jews today over whether to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem and the expansion of Israeli settlements into the West Bank is an echo of the quarrels of Biblical times. Is the story of the 12 tribes of Israel separating into two kingdoms true? How deep is the historical continuity betw...

When it comes to Iran, ignorance is not bliss. For the last 40 years, American policy makers have displayed astonishing ignorance about the day to day reality of life in Iran. This has led to one blunder after another in how the US deals with the country, most recently President Trump's withdrawing the US from the JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal. What makes this ignorance astonishing is just how much c...

The reality of torture is usually smothered in euphemism when it is discussed in Washington as it has been during the Senate hearings on Gina Haspel, Trump's nominee to run the CIA. It shouldn't be. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb, who has interviewed torture victims and torturers, and made the DuPont award winning documentary, "Surviving Torture: Inside Out" cuts through the euphemisms sur...

On the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, FRDH host Michael Goldfarb has a meditation on the uprising's meaning today. He tells the story of how the Jews of Warsaw, one-third of the population of the city were herded into a Ghetto and how slowly and then rapidly the Nazis tried to kill them all until, eventually, a group of fighters decided to die with a gun in their hands on teh stre...

The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in the spring of 1968 was a national trauma. Like most traumas people have repressed their memories of the event. Yet, half a century later, the twin decapitation of America's progressive leadership still has an effect on the country. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb traces the decline of broadcast journalism and political discou...

The Iraq War began 15 years ago. Seems like ancient history given where America is now. This FRDH podcast, made at the start of the war, shines a light on what might have been and foreshadows the disaster the Occupation became, a disaster Iraqis are still trying to crawl out from under. Was the failure of the Iraq War the American unipolar moment begin to unravel? Was the day Saddam Hussein’s regi...